Hi really sorry if this has been posted before, but really need a quick answer as Dell are picking up this laptop tomorrow.

What has happened is my mum tried to install something, not 100% what, that allowed her to have a F11 and F12 key. But all it has done is kill the laptop now all that happens is the power LED comes on but black screen nothing else.

I though I could just pull out the hard drive and wack it in a caddy to recover the data, but obviously not as it has a tiny little SSD. This is the problem I really really need to recover the data as it has her uni assignments on which she has been working on for months plus lots of very important business stuff, which of course hasn't been backed up for ages =/

Unfortunately, both are on backorder. Wish I could help, but I've got one on backorder myself. Maybe some kind soul who has purchased one of the Pro IV drives from MDD could help you out. I'm pretty sure those come with a compatible enclosure.

Sounds like you should postpone the Dell pickup until you get the data off there, in any case. Best of luck. This sort of stuff can be a real pain.

I should add, take care when removing the screws which hold the SSD in place. The combination of a poor screw head and loctite can be challenging. I wasn't careful enough and ended up stripping the heads.

Oh. I took "all that happens is the power LED comes on but black screen nothing else" to mean the machine wasn't POSTing and so couldn't be booted at all. But redmini may have meant it was POSTing and then showing a black screen when it tried to boot from the HD. I probably should have verified all this before suggesting the enclosure.

If the mini is getting through POST, booting from a Linux live CD/USB key is definitely the way to go. My apologies to redmini for leading him down a more difficult path is that turns out to be the case.

To get the F11 and F12 working (z and x keys) you need a new bios, so I guess that's what your mum was "installing/updating"
Flashing a bios from Windows is never a good idea, DOS is far better option.
If something goes wrong, you could end with a bricked machine.

As Ichiban suggested, you can recover from a non-booting mini using the procedure in the link he posted, Dell has a nice option that would allows flashing a bios with no interaction from the user (you would need something to boot from usb) and that should recover your mini and of course, the data in the SDD.